I’ve spent my entire career in marketing and sales, primarily focused on B2B #martech for the last fifteen. I’ve held senior positions with SaaS vendors and tech agencies alike. For the last two months, I’ve been working on an enterprise demand center full renovation. Stripping it down to the studs, new wiring, plumbing, dry-wall, and paint. 

I’m the contractor, expected to get a job done on time and on budget. No fancy title or position. It’s been years since I’ve managed an enterprise stack on a daily basis. The tech complexity to master and the T&E required to manage is f#cking nuts. Unrealistic expectations from internal stakeholders and executive team only add to the pressure cooker. No other internal team is expected to do so much with so little.

And this gig happens to be one of the most rewarding of my career. I had lost my way and become one of those SVP/C-suite talking heads who confuses marketing theory with operational reality. I had lost perspective regarding the mental toughness and discipline required to be a successful practitioner. You see, I took pride in the fact that I was a “home run hitter”, always swinging for the fences. But, now I need to view marketing like Ichiro Suzuki sizes up pitch counts. Nothing makes a better hitter than the patience to work the count. Every senior marketing and sales leader should spend one to two weeks a year working “for” not “with” their MOPS team.

Too many marketing and sales pros have no idea what it takes to execute the crap they see on LinkedIn. 

updated in today’s vervacular…

[fans] who dig home runs aren’t the ones who appeal to me. I think there’s [showmanship] in infield hits because they require technique. I’d rather impress the [fans] with my technique than with my brute strength. Then, every now and then, just to show I can do that, too, I might [tease] a little by hitting one out.  – Ichiro Suzuki

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